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Penguin Commander

Name: Penguin Commander
Author: Administrator

A dual-pane orthodox file manager for Linux, modelled on Total Commander — two panels, a command line, and the whole F-key row, in Python + GTK 3 with zero dependencies beyond PyGObject.

License	MIT
Generated by	Anthropic Claude Opus 5 —
Platforms	linux
Rating	0/100 (0 ratings) · worked for 0, didn't for 0
Downloads	0
Latest version	1.0.0 (2026-09-11)
Uploader	Administrator
Estimated generation cost	2,115,000 tokens (≈ $12.69) — saved so far: 0 tokens

Screenshots

Penguin Commander screenshot

Description

Penguin Commander is a keyboard-driven file manager for Linux built in the image of Total Commander, the orthodox file manager Christian Ghisler has been shipping since 1993. Total Commander runs on Linux only through Wine; this is a native reimplementation of its interaction model, not just its looks.

Two file panels side by side, a working command line underneath, the classic F3 View / F4 Edit / F5 Copy / F6 Move / F7 NewFolder / F8 Delete row at the bottom, and everything reachable without touching the mouse.

What makes it a real orthodox file manager

The cursor is separate from the selection. Arrow keys never disturb your marked files, Insert marks and steps down, Space marks and measures a folder, and gray + / - mark by wildcard. This one detail is what most "Commander-like" file managers get wrong.
Folder tabs per panel — lockable, renameable, and restored on next launch along with sort order, filters and column widths.
Archives are directories. Press Enter on a .zip, .tar.xz, .7z, .deb or .apk and you are simply inside it, at any depth in the path. ZIP and TAR families are handled natively; 7z, RAR, ISO and CAB go through the 7z command when it is installed.
Background operations with per-file and total progress, transfer rate and ETA, plus pause, cancel, send-to-background and queueing — and the full Overwrite / Overwrite all / Overwrite older / Skip / Skip all / Rename / Auto-rename / Resume prompt. Resume continues a half-finished copy instead of starting over.
The single "target + mask" field from the copy dialog: type /backup/, /backup/*.bak, report-final.txt or 2026_*.* and it does the right thing.

The toolkit

Tool	What it does
Multi-rename (`Ctrl+M`)	The complete `[N] [E] [C] [YMD] [P] [U] [L]` placeholder language, search & replace with regex and `a\\|b` → `b\\|a` swaps, live preview and undo
Synchronize directories	Compare two trees by name, size, date or full content; asymmetric mode mirrors left onto right; flip any row's direction individually
Compare by content	Side-by-side diff with synchronised scrolling and jump-to-next-difference; binary files fall back to a hex comparison
Find files (`Alt+F7`)	Masks or regex, full-text search with encoding selection, size and date ranges, depth limits, folder exclusions, search inside archives, and a duplicate finder
Lister (`F3`)	Text, binary, hex and image modes with encoding selection, word wrap and in-file search
Editor (`F4`)	Find, replace with regex, go-to-line, encoding and line-ending detection
Plus	Pack/unpack (zip, tar.gz/bz2/xz, 7z), split & combine, md5/sha1/sha256/sha512/crc32 checksums, recursive chmod/chown/timestamps, base64, branch view, quick view, directory hotlist, quick filter

Linux, not Windows-in-a-wig

Where a Windows concept has no equivalent, the native one replaces it: the drive-letter bar becomes mount points and volumes (following the desktop's volume monitor, so plugging in a stick shows up), DOS attributes become Unix permissions shown as drwxr-xr-x, and the recycle bin becomes the XDG trash. Colours adapt to light and dark GTK themes automatically, and icons render at the screen's device scale so they stay crisp on HiDPI displays.

Engineering

Python 3 and GTK 3 via PyGObject. No build step, no pip install, nothing beyond the standard library — python3 pcmd.py runs it from a checkout. About 10,800 lines across 29 modules, composed so the concerns stay separate: the window builds widgets, a commands mixin implements what each command does, a keymap mixin decides when they run, and a small VFS layer makes archives browsable everywhere without special cases in the UI.

Operations run on worker threads and report through GLib.idle_add; when a worker needs a decision it blocks on an event while the main loop shows the dialog, which is what makes the classic overwrite flow possible without freezing the interface.

Tested, then hardened

47 unit tests, 43 regression tests and 40 scripted GUI interactions driving the real widgets, green as both an ordinary user and as uid 0.
A dedicated QA pass found and fixed 18 defects, each now covered by a regression test. Among them: an archive path traversal (zip slip) that let a malicious archive write outside the extraction directory; a copy that hung forever on a FIFO; unpack silently overwriting existing files; file names that are not valid UTF-8 crashing the UI; and a clipboard that never worked at all because the PyGObject API it used does not exist.
Also covered: symlink cycles, device nodes, unreadable directories, 20 000-entry folders (select-all went from 90 s to 0.18 s), sparse files, HiDPI screens, and a non-X11 GDK backend.

Every defect is documented with its fix in docs/QA.md.

Install

Debian / Ubuntu / Mint — sudo apt install ./penguin-commander_1.0_all.deb
Any distribution — download the AppImage, chmod +x, run
From source — python3 pcmd.py, or ./install.sh for a user-level install

Not included

No FTP client (mount remote filesystems with gio mount or sshfs and browse them as ordinary directories) and no .wcx/.wlx plugin ABI, since those are Windows DLL interfaces. Archives are read-only: unpack, change, repack.

MIT licensed. Total Commander is a trademark of Ghisler Software GmbH; this is an independent reimplementation of its interface concepts and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

Downloads

PenguinCommander-1.0-x86_64.AppImage — Linux, 1 MB
penguin-commander_1.0_all.deb — Linux, 127.5 KB
total_commander.tar.gz — Source, 769.9 KB

Original prompt(s)

Prompt 1

1. I want you to create a Linux clone of Total Commander application / Research the application before implementing any code: https://www.ghisler.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Commander / It should be desktop application / Do your best, good luck.
2. Now do some serious Q/A testing and fix possible issues, erros and bugs before publishing the application

Tags: archive-browser, dual-pane, file-manager, file-sync, keyboard-driven, multi-rename, norton-commander, orthodox-file-manager, total-commander

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